MONTREAL (LifeSiteNews) — A top employee of the pornography giant Aylo, which owns Pornhub, said he believes porn use is addictive, unhealthy, and damages relationships during an undercover interview released last week.
Mike Farley, a senior product manager at Aylo (formerly Mindgeek), the parent company of Pornhub and other popular internet porn sites, openly bashed porn use during an undercover interview posted to X by journalist Arden Young with investigative journalism outfit Sound Investigations.
NEW UNDERCOVER P*RNHUB VID
P*rnhub Product Manager Says P*rn “Can’t Be Normal,” “Can’t Be Healthy”
Discusses P*rn Psychology From @jordanbpeterson, “We Don’t Really Know The Implications of This S**t”
Admits P*rn Is Addictive to Retain 180MM Users/Day
“I Hope They All Ban Us” pic.twitter.com/AyM9eMWIZA
— Arden Young (@arden_young_) December 14, 2023
Asked by the group’s undercover reporter earlier this year if he thinks porn is addictive, Farley replied, “I think so. For sure. I mean, 180 million unique visitors a day is a lot,” later adding, “I definitely think porn addiction is … a thing.”
Farley cited the famous psychologist and commentator Jordan Peterson, claiming he has said that we don’t fully understand the effects of porn use. However, there are already a multitude of studies pointing to a wide variety of detrimental effects of porn, including sexual dysfunction, short-term memory loss, and the activation of the same addiction centers in the brain that are triggered by alcohol and heroin.
“We don’t really know the implications of this s***,” Farley said. He went on to highlight Peterson’s observation that men are now able to see “more beautiful nude women in one day … than any man in history had ever seen” throughout his whole lifetime.
“Your brain thinks you’ve seen them in person,” Farley noted. “That can’t be normal. That can’t be healthy. That must do something. Because that’s like, significant.”
He also admitted he does not think Pornhub is concerned about ethics, saying, “It’s a f****** adult website. It’s kind of the opposite of ethical.”
When the investigative journalist pointed out that “many people portray pornography as liberating,” Farley replied, “Liberating? I don’t know, I just think it’s the easy way out. And I don’t think anybody watches porn and then feels good about themselves after.”
Farley also agreed with Peterson’s observation that pornography “damages relationships.”
“I feel like it’s kind of cheating a little bit, in some way. I mean it has to be, I think,” Farley said.
Evidence is mounting that porn use is actually associated with “active” infidelity. A University of Central Florida study has found that people in committed relationships who view pornographic materials are more likely to cheat on their partners than those who don’t, even after controlling for initial cheating behavior before porn use.
Other research has found that porn users are more open to marital infidelity, the leading cause of divorce in the United States. Independent of these findings, porn use has been found to significantly increase the chances of divorce.
Farley believes porn sets “standards that are unachievable” and creates “unrealistic expectations” for men, a phenomenon that studies have suggested contribute to divorce, according to NPR’s Shankar Vedantam.
“I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t think it’s realistic. Like, it’s not the real world,” Farley said.
Peterson has pointed out, as have other social commentators, that porn use can disincentivize men from approaching real-life women to pursue relationships. This phenomenon is corroborated by a study published in the Eastern Economic Journal that found that porn use was more closely linked with lower marriage rates for men than any other type of online behavior.
Disturbingly, porn use has been linked to an increase in sex crimes. For at least a decade, a high number of sexual crimes committed by children has been linked to the preponderance of pornography by groups such as the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
The problem is only worsening. Anecdotal reports evidence a growing porn-fueled rape culture among minors, which one counselor said made her “permanently angry, emotional, and distrustful of men” after just a few years working with young people.
The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has also reported that pornography is inspiring a wave of sex crimes among minors. The charity shared in September that they had witnessed “a 30% increase in under-18s contacting them and a 26% rise in adults contacting them because they were concerned about the behavior of a young person.”
In a clip shared by Sound Investigations without context, Farley went so far as to say that he hopes “they all ban us,” reportedly referring to countries. Online pornography is banned in a few dozen nations, particularly Muslim-majority countries.